Jewish Berlin Then and Now: Culture, Society and the German Capital from the 18th Century Until Today

Tuition: $400 | YIVO members: $325**
Students: $215 (Must register with valid university email address)

This is a live, online seminar held weekly on Zoom. Enrollment will be capped at about 15 students. All course details (Zoom link, syllabus, handouts, etc.) will be posted to Canvas. Students will be granted access to the class on Canvas after registering for the class here on the YIVO website. This class will be conducted in English.

Instructor: Elisabeth Becker Topkara

Course Description:
This course centers on Jewish Berlin present and past, from the 18th century until today. It examines the modern city as not only a place of Jewish persecution during National Socialism but also as a rich place of Jewish culture and life. From the living room salons that placed Jewish women on equal social ground with other city denizens to the revitalization of traditional Jewish spaces at the turn of the 21st century, it illuminates this richness as an integral part of the urban tapestry. Together, through memoir, essays, art, architecture, film, and primary sources (both objects and text), we will enter the world of Jewish Berlin as it was, as it is, and as it is imagined.

We will draw from the texts of 20th century Jewish critical thinkers like Walter Benjamin, who saw himself as raised by this city, poets like Else-Laske Schuler who wrote of a longing for the city that she loved and lost when she fled to Jerusalem during National Socialist rule, and contemporary Jewish intellectuals like American historian Leonard Barkan, who found himself surprisingly enchanted by the German capital. In the hopes and disappointments that stretch over hundreds of years, we will also focus on shared experiences that have emerged in the fashioning and inhabitance of Jewish Berlin. Some questions that we will attend to include: How does Berlin link to the history of displacement and home in the Jewish experience? What does it mean to be both German and Jew? And is there really such thing as Jewish Berlin at all?

Who should take this course?
This class is open to anyone interested in the topic as outlined in the course description. The class discussion will be conducted in English, and all course materials will be read in English or in English translation. No previous background knowledge or specific education level is required.

Course Materials:
Please purchase the following book before class begins. The instructor will provide all other course materials digitally throughout the class on Canvas.

• Berlin for Jews: A Twenty-First-Century Companion by Leonard Barkan (Purchase)

Purchasing the following book is optional but encouraged:

• Berlin Childhood around 1900 by Walter Benjamin, translated by Howard Eiland (Purchase)

Elisabeth Becker Topkara is a Freigeist Fellow (assistant professor) at the Max-Weber-Institute for Sociology, Heidelberg University and a Landecker Democracy Fellow. She holds a PhD in Sociology from Yale University, a master's degree in Forced Migration from Oxford University, and a BA in Sociology from Cornell University. Elisabeth is author of Mosques in the Metropolis: Incivility, Caste and Contention in Europe (University of Chicago Press), which brings research in two of Europe's largest mosques into conversation with 20th century Jewish thinkers, in order to make sense of the enduring marginalization of Muslims in Europe. Elisabeth's writings on Jewish and Muslim life in Europe and the United States have been published widely in academic journals, as well as mainstream publications including The Washington Post, Tablet Magazine, and Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. She is currently working on a book manuscript entitled The Moving Lives of Jewish Berlin, which unites Jewish intellectuals from Berlin's past with contemporary Jewish thinkers living in the German capital.

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